Sioux, Cheyenne celebrate new historic landmark

Billings Gazette ^ | 11 June 2012 | Lorna Thackaray

[smokingfrog]

LAME DEER — For 1,000 years or more, native peoples have etched their histories and prophecies on the sandstone faces of Deer Medicine Rocks near what is now Lame Deer.

Barely visible bighorn sheep, warriors on horseback and a grizzly bear roam the soft, sheer faces of the rock outcrop just off the Northern Cheyenne Reservation.

And on an early June day 136 years ago, a Sioux artist carved a vision that had come to Hunkpapa medicine man Sitting Bull after a torturous Sundance ceremony. In the dream, soldiers with “grasshopper” legs fell from the sky into the Indian camp. The soldiers had no ears.

This vision is believed to have foretold victory at Little Bighorn about three weeks later on June 25, 1876.

On Monday, descendants of the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors who defeated Lt. Col. George A. Custer and his 7th Cavalry gathered at Deer Medicine Rocks to celebrate the sacred site’s new status as a National Historic Landmark.

David Harrington, acting superintendent at nearby Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, told about 200 people gathered for the ceremony that Deer Medicine Rocks’ new status ranked it beside the Alamo, Mount Vernon and the Empire State Building as one of the nation’s most important historic sites.

[smokingfrog]

[Humble Servant]

Looks like Elizabeth Warren to me.

[smokingfrog]

Definitely not more important than the Alamo.

[Jeff Chandler]

In the dream, soldiers with “grasshopper” legs fell from the sky into the Indian camp. The soldiers had no ears.

Dude! Easy on the Jimson weed.

[Last Dakotan]

They should have just used the printing press. Oh yeah, this is a culture that never invented the wheel in 5,000 years.

[GladesGuru]

““We are going to be leaders and teachers once again,” he said. “Our ancestors spoke of this time — a cleansing.”

Classes on scalping next semester at the Monument. Remember to bring your own lab supplies. The lecture and lab will be multilingual, with Arabic and English supplementing the Indigenous Person Lecturer's native language.

[ConorMacNessa]

Please excuse me while I barf my guts out! What did Sitting Bull contribute to our Nation other than a legacy of blood? I've had enough of this noble savage bull-hockey. My ancestors, Dead White European Males, and of course their doughty female consorts, built this Great Nation. The Indians, a people for whom I harbor no ill-will, were barely beyond a neolithic culture.

I'm tired of this tail wagging the the dog of American society. My high school used to be known as the Northwood Indians. Now they're known as the Northwood Gladiators. Did anyone consult the descendants of the Greeks, Romans and other ethnic peoples who served as gladiators in ancient Rome to ascertain whether they would be offended? Hell, no!

In this PC society, euphemism trumps the Truth. The Washington Post stopped referring to the Notre Dame football team as the "Fighting Irish" and began referring to them as the Irish. I've got a news flash for you, WAPO! We are the Fighting Irish and we're damned proud of it. We endured seven centuries of subjugation and threw off our chains not through meekness and politeness, but because we fought for it like demons.

I don't mean to go off on a tangent like this. But Harrington has his head up his kiester. Next to places like Valley Forge, Gettysburg, Pearl Harbor, or Ground Zero, this site is strictly minor league. I would add that there are many places outside the U.S., like the Normandy Beaches, Bastogne, Belleau Wood, Mt. Suribachi, and others, that far outrank this nondescript rock with primitive carvings on it as national historic sites. End of rant.



Genuflectimus non ad principem sed ad Principem Pacis!

Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. (Isaiah 49:1 KJV)

[Frank_2001]

Yes we will HAVE to learn the ways of the deer, the bear and the wolf, once the Communist Demonocrats have completed the ruin of the country. If you want to eat, you will have to shoot it, hook it, gather it, or starve.....

[smokingfrog]

They’re probably working on some kind of monuments for the Japs that bombed us at Pearl Harbor and the Mooslims that took down the twin towers as we speak.

[Gertie]

Right on, I love the “Cultural”, the sunglasses, wristwatches, cowboy hats, 30-30 Winchesters and horses. As phony as the rest of their story.

[Smokin' Joe]

Oh yeah, this is a culture that never invented the wheel in 5,000 years.

Just what good would a wheel have been in the breaks, bottoms and even on the prairies? Something else to break, labor intensive to create, and no roads (more labor intensive) to use it on.

For their environment, the travois did just fine. None of the mountain men or French trappers (nor even Lewis and Clark) were using a lot of wheels, either.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Smokin' Joe]

Yes we will HAVE to learn the ways of the deer, the bear and the wolf, once the Communist Demonocrats have completed the ruin of the country. If you want to eat, you will have to shoot it, hook it, gather it, or starve.....

Could be. A lot of American Indian style woodcraft is presented in earlier versions of the Boy Scout Manual, for those who want to learn.

Knowledge of those skills was once regarded as virtuous in the lower 48, not reason to be branded as some sort of freak.

We'll see who eats and who doesn't.

[ansel12]

I would like to learn how the enemy that defeated our vastly outnumbered American heroes treated the POWs before I call them noble.

[fish hawk]

If it were not for the primitive people of the world, snarky A H like you would invent them so you would have someone to look down on.

[AlmaKing]

Seems like several hundred thousand or more immigrants crossed those rough terrains on any of a dozen trails to CA, OR, and various other now states in wheeled wagons just after the fur trapping period phased out. Then, they built this country.

[Smokin' Joe]

There was already a country here, although much of it had fallen to ruin by the time people cut wagon trails. Estimates vary widely, but between 10 and 80% of the indigenous residents did not survive the smallpox epidemic which accompanied contact with Europeans. Such a decimation or worse even of modern populations would seriously affect economy, society, culture, and even our technology.

For those who used rivers for their highways, the wheel wasn't a necessity. (Note that we still move a tremendous amount of cargo by water, and that the oldest of heavily occupied areas, with few exceptions, were along waterways or where the headwaters of several drainage systems were in proximity to one another.

Sure, wheeled travel has facilitated the development of areas farther inland, but it only has been practical since the construction of roads and railroads.

Take away a couple of aspects of this 'civilization', and we'd be on foot/horseback and trading via boat as well.

[driftless2]

I've got nothing against monuments honoring Indian-Americans. My argument is with the people who jump up and down saying we "stole" their land. Sure, we "stole" it. Just like they stole it from the previous inhabitants whom they killed or forced off their land. The Sioux were known for that. And as for a number of shameful episodes in our history where we treated a certain tribe or tribes shabbily or worse, we had other tribes who were at war with the shabbily treated Indians as our allies helping us with the killing or bad treatment. Not far from where I live is a monument near Ferryville, Wisconsin to the Blackhawk Indians who were killed by Federal troops in 1833. Little recognized is the fact that the Sioux, who were bitter enemies of the Blackhawk, helped the government with the killing. Two sides to every story.

But even given that, there were less than five million Indians north of the Rio Grande when the white man came to the continent. That means there was plenty of room. And there still is. It is a fact that primitive people, which we all were at one time, do not stay primitive forever. There's no way the Indians could maintain a hunter-gatherer culture indefinitely in the face of modern civilization. American Indians are the same as all the peoples of the world....adapt or perish.

[smokingfrog]

You've never seen A Man Called Horse ?

Pure Hollywood, I'm sure.

[blueunicorn6]

They’re making the South wall of the Billings Sheraton a landmark, too.

“Eat me!” - now there’s art......

[GladesGuru]

“Yes we will HAVE to learn the ways of the deer, the bear and the wolf, once the Communist Demonocrats have completed the ruin of the country. If you want to eat, you will have to shoot it, hook it, gather it, or starve.....”

I must disagree. Standard Soviet Union military plans for war with America was:
1. Use nukes.
2. Use bacterial weapon.
3. Use different bacteriological weapon.
3. Use third biological weapon.

Note the nukes, then multiple weaponized bacteriological weapons. Biopreparat was a busy bunch.

Present Russia is little different from the old USSR. Once KGB, always KGB.

Putin is KGB, in a better suit.